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Day 7: Skating on the Olympic Trails

We woke up at 7:30, went for a quick walk jog around the neighborhood, then went over to the cooking apartment and had some tasty oatmeal. We then grabbed our skate equipment and threw it into the back of the cargo van and headed to the Olympic venue in Lillehammer. When we arrived the sky was cloudy but bright, and the snow was fresh. The trails looked wonderful. We snapped on our skis and headed out. The trails were very wide and perfect for skating. They twisted and turned, went over and under bridges, and up and down hills making for a wonderful roller coaster like ski. We shot around on the trails close to the stadium, going as hard or easy as we wanted before heading out on some of the longer trails. We set out on the women’s 15k freestyle Olympic loop which was fun and fast.

When realized the 15k loop wasn’t groomed the whole way we switched to the 30k loop which had a lot of fast downhills that we sped around as we headed back to the stadium. Tim Caldwell pulled his classic move of trying to push me off the trail “accidentally” but luckily I managed to stay on my feet. We reached the stadium after a few hours and then some of us Keelan, Grant, Tim, Adam, and I skied back to the apartments which was an exhilarating downhill ride that ended with a long straight hill down past the ski jumps above our apartments to the road right above our apartments where I tried to stop but ended up crashing. We were back before the rest of the team in vans so we skied back up to the top of the field and raced back down again. We then took off our skis and headed back to the apartments arriving at the same time as the others in the vans. We then changed our clothes, took showers, and ate lunch in preparation for a trip to the Swix Factory. It had been a wonderful morning one of my favorites from the trip so far which was great preparation for the awesome afternoon at the Swix Factory.